Golding vs. Rousseau

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There has been a long lasting argument about the two views on life of two men, Golding, and Rousseau. Golding’s view on life is that man is naturally evil at any age. He also believes that civilization makes man good due to the excessive amount of rules that makes man enter a state in which they are no longer in their natural states. Rousseau has an opinion in which man is naturally pure but instead of civilization making man good, it makes man bad due to all of the schemes involved in civilization. Golding used Lord of the Flies to try to combat Rousseau’s ideas on life and promote his own. Although Golding thought his book would debunk Rousseau’s theory it promoted it at the same time, some aspects of both men’s theories are present in not only the book but the movie also. I personally believe in Rousseau’s ideas because man seems to be naturally good in the fact its only main idea is to live life, no harm right?
Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a great philosopher who lived in the Enlightenment. He was a very influential philosopher and “Thinker” he has written many books including The Discourse on the Origin of Inequality. Rousseau’s theory was in essence that humans were created naturally pure and innocent but over time and new technologies become more evil. He had thought that in the very first light of man he was completely innocent, a being who had no intention to harm anyone else. However as time progressed and the growing capacity for man increased and the

knowledge base of human kind increased man began to explore more possibilities and more options which gave them the idea that led them to become more evil. Rousseau explained his theories and thoughts in many of his books which inspired and influenced so many pe...

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... can be commonly accepted as he lived and thought in the Enlightenment era where he saw that humans were more pure when born due to the sheer amount of religion during that time period and religion made people pure do to the beliefs of the most common religions back then. On the other hand Golding lived in another time period in which a major war was taking place. He probably saw how the barbaric tendencies of uncivilized attackers showed how a well-built civilization makes all the difference in man and makes them good. All in all I believe in both sides but have come to the conclusion that if I truly had to choose one side of the argument I would side with Rousseau due to the fact of modern day humans wanting so much freedom that when they had it they could be peaceful because they could do what they want without anyone else ever interrupting or stopping them.

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